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Category Archives: Calls for Creative Writing

Stories About Games, the People Who Play Them, and their Imaginative Worlds

Deadline August 5th, 2018

From its humble beginnings as roughly printed booklets a half century ago, Dungeons & Dragons has gone on to become a global phenomenon and has inspired many writers, including George R. R. Martin, to fall in love with fiction and to think deeper about their characters and the worlds they inhabit. The London Reader is looking for stories that explore this connection.

The London Reader is issuing an open call for creative writing and other artwork where fantasy and fantasy games are central to the story, such as in Ready Player One, Stranger Things, Neal Stephenson’s The Big U, Tad Williams’s Otherland novels, Mazes & Monsters, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, the 2017 Jumanji movie, or many episodes of TV sitcoms where the characters sit down to play Dungeons & Dragons.

There have been many novels featuring games, but now the game has changed. LitRPG is a genre of fiction that developed in Russia over the last five years, first pioneered by Vasily Mahanenko and Alex Bobl. In LitRPG stories, a character inhabits a game world, overcomes its challenges, and “levels-up”. This issue will have a special feature on LitRPG stories, and we encourage LitRPG submissions as well as other experimental approaches to the fantasy genre.

While this call for submissions is open to fiction about all kinds of games, the issue will focus on stories featuring fantasy games in particular, such as in Stranger Things. Stories can also explore the social relationships of groups of players as both table-top and video games bring groups together on an adventure, leading to both inter-personal conflict and life-long friendships.

This issue will feature short stories, minifiction, experimental works, poems, and artwork that explores games and the fantasy worlds they inhabit. Traditional fantasy fiction inspired by roleplaying games will also be considered, but most submissions should feature the relationship and dynamics between players and fantasy games.

Story prompts and inspirations:

A bad break-up and the impact it has on a group of gaming friends.

A bullied teen finds themselves trapped in a virtual reality game and learns from the exp.

An existential crisis is caused when a divorcee realizes all there is to her life is a game.

Real world politics threaten to rip a virtual game world apart.

A gamer falls in love with their character.

The imaginary nations in a complicated game of thrones spills over into the real world.

A new research chemical causes players to experience a game in a vivid and real way.

A re-imagining of the “Satanic panic” of the 70s and 80s when fanatical Christians believed that games were tools of dark magic and the devil.

Four players gather for one last game after the death of their Game Master.

What to submit: Creative works can be stand-alone pieces or collections, but should be fewer than 5,000 words, or no more than 5 poems. Multiple submissions are welcome. Artwork should be favourably viewed on a tablet or single A5 page.

How to submit: Email submissions as word attachments to coordinator@LondonReader.uk and place “Drama & Dragons SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Please include a short biographical statement in the body of the e-mail and indicate whether the submitted pieces have been previously published and whether you hold publication rights to them.

The deadline for submission on this theme is August 5th, 2018

Stories and Reflections on Truth in the 21st Century

Deadline May 6, 2018

The London Reader is issuing an open call for short stories and minifiction that touch on the topics of truth, media, and fake news, and how they affect our lives in the 21st century. Ideal submissions include both relatable stories about characters living in the world of social media as well as experimental stories that explore the nature of fact and fiction. Submissions of visual art and poetry on the same themes are also encouraged.

News invented by the newspaper and click-bait headlines; everyday life distorted by the smartphone lens; dystopias of political doublespeak and corporate social experiments; the unreliable narrators of social media stories or dating profiles; characters caught up in a world of falsehoods and fake news; and creative writing about the shifting standards of truth, such as in Alice Munro’s short story on storytelling, “Family Furnishings”. Fact and fiction often overlap, and this issue of the London Reader features stories that play in that grey area between truth and truthiness and stories of the characters trying to navigate that difference. At a time when the news is called into question, fiction can help us rediscover the truth.

What to submit: Creative works can be standalone pieces or collections, but should be fewer than 5,000 words. Multiple submissions are welcome. Artwork should be favourably viewed on a tablet or single A5 page.

How to submit: Email submissions as word document attachments to coordinator@LondonReader.uk and place “Post-Truth SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Please include a short biographical statement in the body of the e-mail and indicate whether the submitted pieces have been previously published and whether you hold publication rights to them.

The deadline for submission on this theme is May 6, 2018.

After Words: Animal Reflections

Deadline: January 31, 2018

The London Reader is issuing an open call for fiction and nonfiction writing about animals, in the form of short stories, minifiction, creative essays, or poetry, as well as art and photography on this theme:

We live side by side with animals. A flock of pigeons roosting on a rooftop is as apparently ordinary a scene as that of cats scrapping audibly down the street or squirrels teasing their would-be chasers before turning tail to safety. Dogs are practically everywhere—many are members of our own families. How often we forget that we, too, are animals, and that our relationships with animals speak tellingly both to the history and condition of our species.

After Words: Animal Reflections will focus on the lives of animals—in themselves, in imagination, in relationship, and in thoughtful combinations thereof. In fable, fantasy, allegory—and in forms more and less traditional and experimental—submissions for After Words will reveal the moving ways animals have visited and haunted our lives and writing, and explore how, in our basest and most elevated moments alike, we belong to their number.

What to submit: Creative works can be standalone pieces or collections, but should be fewer than 4,000 words. Final selections will be weighed in favour of shorter works. Multiple submissions are welcome. Artwork should be favourably viewed on a tablet or a single page.

How to submit: Email submissions and questions to coordinator@LondonReader.uk. Place ‘AFTER WORDS’ in the subject line.

Please include a short biographical statement in the body of the e-mail, and indicate whether the submitted pieces have been previously published and whether you hold publication rights to them.

Wish You Were Here: Writing and Reflections on Travel

Deadline: November 5, 2017

The London Reader is issuing an open call for fiction and nonfiction travel writing in the form of short stories, minifiction, creative essays, or poetry as well as art and photography on the same theme.

The freedom of fitting all your responsibilities in a backpack; the mixed anxiety and excitement of your airplane taking off; the swelling contentment of watching the sun set into a foreign sea. Wish You Were Here will feature the stories of world travelers—stories of following the call of the road, of feeling small in a big world, of coming of age by going abroad, and of losing yourself to discover yourself.

What to Submit: Creative works can be stand alone pieces or collections, but should be less than 4,000 words. Final selection will be weighed in favour of shorter works. Multiple submissions are allowed.

How to Submit: Email submissions or questions to coordinator@LondonReader.uk. Place ‘WISH YOU WERE HERE’ in the subject line. Please include a biographical personal statement in the body of the e-mail, and indicate whether the submitted pieces have been previously published and if you hold the publication rights to them.

The London Reader is issuing an open call for both true-to-life and fully fantastic short stories, minifiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, art, and illustrations that explore the experiences of mental health and mental difficulties.

“Cheer up,” you say, because it seems that easy.

“Please, understand,” I ask, but it’s just as useless when it’s not words but weights that I’m feeling.

How can you tell someone what it’s like when bedsheets become manacles or bedsides become clifftops? Those suffering from depression, anxiety, or other mental difficulties have often turned to stories and artwork to communicate what the dictionary fails to define. When one’s thoughts don’t make sense, sometimes only fiction can make sense of them. Words From Within will lay bare the experiences of living with a mental health diagnosis through the anecdotes and imaginations of those who suffer and those who love them.

What to Submit: Creative works can be stand alone pieces or collections, but should be less than 4,000 words or no more than 6 images for photography/art. Final selection will be weighed in favour of shorter works.

How to Submit: Email submissions or questions to coordinator@LondonReader.uk. Place ‘WORDS FROM WITHIN‘ in the subject line. Please include a biographical personal statement in the body of the e-mail, and indicate whether the submitted pieces have been previously published and if you hold the publication rights to them.

The London Reader is issuing an open call for short stories, minifiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art that explore love in the digital and narcissistic age.

“Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.” – Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

#DigitalLove: Checking our smartphones after every ping, we fail to concentrate on any one thing for more than a few minutes. Lacking the ability to delay gratification, we’ve no patience, no faith; we want it all and we want it now. In an age where we turn the lens on ourselves more than towards our lovers, is it still possible to love each other? In this new age, where we right-swipe for the next date, look for love in online match algorithms, flirt with 2D emoijis, and check new messages both during dinner and between the bed sheets, are we still capable of loving? Or are we held prisoner by the short-lived act of falling in digital love, over and over again?

What to Submit: Short stories, minifiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art can be stand alone pieces or collections, but should be less than 4,000 words or no more than 6 images for photography/art. Submissions can be true to life or speculative fiction. Final selection will be weighed in favour of shorter works.

How to Submit: Email submissions or questions to coordinator@LondonReader.uk and place ‘DIGITALLOVE’ in the subject line. Please include a biographical personal statement in the body of the e-mail, and indicate whether the submitted pieces have been previously published and if you hold the publication rights to them.

Global Voices: Perspectives from Around the WorldDeadline: extended to October 30, 2016

Home is the where the heart is, but the heart may be far from home…

An upcoming issue of the London Reader will catch glimpses of the people, the geography, and the memories that make us call a place home. It will look at what it means to build a home; to live in a home; and ultimately, to leave a home or to have a home destroyed. In the 21st century—in which nearly 70 million people are forcibly displaced and 244 million live outside their country of birth—home is a more elusive concept than ever, and it is one that is often entwined with loss.

The London Reader is seeking poetry, minifiction, short fiction, non-fiction, and photography/art from under-represented voices from all over the world that explore belonging, alienation, forced migration, job relocation, and identity. All submissions within these themes will be considered, but narratives from women, the LGBTQ community, people of colour, migrants, and those from low and middle-income countries will be given priority.

Submissions can be stand alone pieces or collections, but should be less than 4,000 words or no more than 5 images for photography/art, and shorter pieces are preferred. Works will be accepted in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Kurdish, and French and will appear in English translation. All other submissions should be in English.

Email submissions or questions to coordinator@londonreader.uk. Place ‘GLOBAL VOICES’ in the subject line. Please include a personal statement of less than 250 words in the body of the e-mail, and indicate whether the submitted pieces have been previously published and if you hold the publication rights to them.

The London Reader will be accepting submissions from July 1 to October 1!

This year, we are looking for minifiction, poetry of less than 400 words, true-to-life fiction of less than 1,500 words, and any fiction or poetry submissions within the following categories:

futurism and cyberpunk

the difference between travel and tourism

voices of people of colour

Submissions should be sent to coordinator@londonreader.uk, and must contain ‘SUBMISSION’ in the subject line. Please include a personal statement of less than 250 words in the body of the e-mail, and indicate the following:

Published quarterly, the London Reader brings you the best known and new voices in creative writing. The content in each issue is curated around a central topic and introduced by a renowned or notable figure in the field.